A Fighter Squadron 33 (VF-33) F-14A Tomcat aircraft heads for the setting sun during a flight off of the aircraft carrier USS AMERICA (CV 66).

A Fighter Squadron 33 (VF-33) F-14A Tomcat aircraft heads for the setting sun during a flight off of the aircraft carrier USS AMERICA (CV 66).

Photo: LCDR Ken Neubauer

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RICK BROWN: Developing healthy eyesight

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Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” He says this in the middle of a discussion that is bookended with a teaching on where our “treasures are our hearts are also” and “you cannot serve both God and money.” Talking about the eye seems at first like he got off-track.

But he didn't. The ancients saw the eye as the “lamp.” We think of the eye as something that takes in light. They understood the eye to shed light. The way we see — our worldview — projects light on our world. It helps us to see our world correctly and walk in it without bumping our way through life without a clue of what is going on around us. Those who do walk around without a clue are often said to be “in the dark.” Jesus doesn't want us to be “in the dark,” especially about money. In another place he tells us to “Watch out for greed!”

He doesn't tell us to “Watch out for adultery!” When you commit adultery you know it. No man ever looks over and says, “Oh, excuse me. You’re not my wife.” No woman ever laughs and says, “Oh, hi there. Silly me. You aren't my husband, are you?” When you commit something like adultery you know it.

But when you commit greed you don’t know it. That’s why we need to watch out for it. Greed and materialism have the effect of blinding us and distorting how we see everything. One way it does this is to make us think we aren't greedy and that it is not a problem we could possibly have. Our lamp is so darkened we never ask, “Do I really need to spend this money on this?”The power of greed is to make us think “that’s not me.” But it is “me.”

Did you know that 70 percent of the wealth of the world is in 5 percent of the people? And if you are a professional you are in the top 20 percent of that 5 percent. None of us could say we could not live more simply. None of us could say we give enough. But the rest of the world sees this. But we can’t. We find it difficult to even entertain the idea that we might be greedy. This is the dark eye.

Instead of a dark eye, Jesus calls us to a “healthy” eye. The word means “generous and compassionate.” His prescription for getting a healthy eye is to not lay up treasures on earth but to lay up treasures in heaven. When you follow his prescription your eye will be healthy and you will be a generous person. The early followers of Jesus were generous. An early Christian named Mathetes wrote Diognetus telling him why the first Christians amazed people. One thing he said was, “They have a common table, but not a common bed. We share our table with all but we do not share our bed with all.”

They were generous in the opposite way of their culture and they impacted their world. Instead of sexual promiscuity and financial stinginess they had sexual integrity and financial promiscuity. It benefited everyone.